THE BULLIES' CLUB

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THE BULLIES' CLUB

John Podhoretz

May 13, 2005 -- ALL eyes are now on the United States Senate, which has unexpectedly become the epicenter of American politics. The question of the year is whether a change in a specific Senate rule — the one that creates the condition for the never-ending debate called a "filibuster" — would represent a shocking breach of American tradition.

The Senate, we're told, is an institution that exists to slow down the mad rush of politics and allow issues to percolate and stew.

But as yesterday's debate in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the nomination of John Bolton demonstrated yet again, at moments of great partisan strife the Senate doesn't debate issues.

The Senate does not allow important topics to get a full hearing. Rather, it allows senators to abuse those who come before them in a process mandated by the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution gives the Senate the power to "advise and consent" on the president's nominees to high office. As a result, Senate debate on critical matters winds up focusing on individual people and their supposed fitness or lack thereof to serve in the government.

Senators, their staffs and those outside the Senate with an interest in these nominations seem to forget that these nominees are not abstract ideas, to be pummeled about by intellectuals and partisans. They are actual human beings. Every nominee is a person. Every nominee has a mother and a father, a spouse, kids. They have private lives. They tend to become famous only because they find themselves under attack.

If one is a nominee for a judgeship, for example, he may be kept in limbo for years, not knowing whether to sell his house in one city because he must move to another, whether to enroll his kids in a new school or leave them in the old one — you know, the sorts of things that actual people have to deal with in the real world.

In the midst of controversy, the Senate frequently uses its authority in appalling ways — by engaging in unanswerable character assassination. The assassination is unanswerable by definition because those whose characters are being assassinated are required by the dynamic of the Senate to behave respectfully toward those who are dragging their names through the mud.

There is something profoundly immoral about all this. Increasingly, it seems, strong-willed people with strong views must submit themselves to the humiliation of standing mute while they are excoriated for their life's work — and while senators and their staffs go hunting for personal dirt on them.

It's not a fair fight. It's a proxy fight. The nominees are often stand-ins for the administration whom the senators wish to bloody — as is the case with John Bolton and the Democrats.

Other times, a nominee becomes an occasion for a senator to perform a holier-than-thou tap-dance. Such was the case yesterday with John Bolton and the Republican senator from Ohio, George Voinovich, who insulted and attacked Bolton without ever having bothered to attend one of the committee hearings in which Bolton testified.

It was comic to hear Voinovich describe Bolton as a "bully" yesterday, because the only bullying in sight was being done by Voinovich — attacking somebody who can't attack back.

And Voinovich himself knows something about bullying. In 1995, when he was governor of Ohio, he had a temper tantrum at an airport because his plane was kept on the ground while Air Force One was in the sky.

He ordered his pilot to take off, screaming at air traffic controllers all the while and daring them to "shoot us down." In an unprecedented act, Voinovich was actually fined by the Federal Aviation Administration for his behavior.

He's still at it in the United States Senate. And why not? The Senate is paradise for bullies. 

E-mail:

podhoretz@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/43882.htm